Busboy

I've noticed that Marvellous is again selling their own baguettes at some locations -- the "Parisian" rather than the sourdough, alas, but they go down pretty OK. The cheese section is, however, declining. MM was never a substitute for a proper cheesemonger, but it used to have a small selection of decent cheeses one could pick up before catching the 42 bus back home, the smell of the cheese and the implied menace of a baguette helping insure that one got a seat. Alas, it's pretty much all commercial stuff now, vacuum-sealed and short on personality.

I'm far from agreeing with him, but Saleton makes an interesting argument for changing our dining habits -- while growing stem cell beef -- in the Washington Post.

Can you talk more about the walk in.. Its my girls bday June 14th and I would take here there.. What was your experience like with no rezi.. ← Last time I was in NYC my wife and I did the walk-in thing on a Sunday night. We got there relatively soon after opening and were told it would be about a 45 minute wait. Half-way through our first glass of wine at the bar, the offered us a table in return for a promise that we'd be out in 90 minutes, which we made. I actually found the meal a little disappointing, but everything else was so wonderful that I am eager to give the place a second chance. Plus, my wife has a crush on Mario so I may have no choice.

I'm not saying, by the way, that there's a problem with being annoyed when someone's seated unnecessarily close to you in a restaurant. The thing that cought my eye was that the dinner was "ruined." It reminded me of that last scene in Carnal Knowledge where Jack Nicholson can't keep it up unless the hooker does everything just right. There's kind of a binary thing happening, it seems as though unless everything is perfect, it's all horrid.

By special request from Truck Patch Farms at Mt. Pleasant: Pig's Head! Not altogether sure what we're going to do with it, but are intrigued by the recipe that includes the instruction "poach brains for later use." Truck Patch also has extraoridary straberries, btw.

My own experience with pick your own has been limited, but disappointing. I suspect that the same economics that apply to other producers apply to them, that the incentive to sell the romance of hand-harvesting and the ripe appearance, rather than the flavor, is overwhelming.

Residents of my city, be on the alert! There's a house across from the Swiss Embassy that is lovingly landscaped, with flowers in full bloom lining the front steps and a garden on the sides of the property that face passers by. Carpeting the lawn, almost within reach, are tiny, briliantly colored alpine strawberries , perfectly ripe. Birds were hopping all around when I made my discovery. No one was home. The guards on the other side of the street were busy chatting in French. I remembered the cravings of Rapunzel's mother and guilt-stricken Augustine's pear and kept my hands away. ← Aha! The last time I foraged for strawberries was third through fifth grade, when the (surely condominium developments by now) fields surrounding my little subdivision sported patches of tiny wild strawberries as delicious as any I've ever tasted and as zealously protected by my friends and I as any truffle patch in Perigord. Hitting the Swiss Embassy will be just like being a kid again. BTW, if your worried about the Swiss Guard, hop an H bus Saturday morning, the fraises at Mt. Pleasant have been cheaper and better than those at Dupont for three weeks running. I've been making the secret recipe sorbet. It ends up costing about ten bucks a pint, but it's an extraordinary thing.

The Marais School, a relatively prestigious private school (ie, public school, for all you rosboeufs out there) began as a French School. Their mascot? The Frog, of course. According to Wikipedia: "Frog A historic pejorative term for the French. The word is probably derived from "frog-eater" (German: Froschfresser), a term listed in the 1913 Webster Dictionary. ... In the United States towns with large French immigrant populations are sometimes called "frog town". In France, the term is often used for the inhabitants of Paris, possibly because the Parisian accent involved a lot of rolled Rs." The unified explanation: "Frog as a derogatory term for "Frenchman" dates from 1778 (short for frog-eater), but before that it meant "Dutch person," in reference to the marshy land where they lived."

I went googling to see what restaurant they ate at; should have known I'd turn up eGullet. This has actually been a good food year for the Sopranos. Artie may be getting his groove back, having been forced to stew up the rabbit he blasted out of his vegetable garden, using his grandfather's recipe; Tony and Christopher gleefully hijacked an SUV full of Pichon-Lalande (which appears in Tony's cellar in subsequent episodes); Ro and Carmella got to the Grande Vefour... And the briefly significant Vito, RIP, turns out to have been a former restaurant guy, as reported in The New York Observer.

As much fun as beating up on this guy is, I'm wondering if he's part of a larger problem...or not. I'm reminded of the currently popular theory that the incidence of severe allergies in children today is caused by the extreme cleanliness of children's environment today (not a phenomenon that, admittedly, my kids experienced). In my youth, you dealt with whatever song the AM radio in mom's car played, you didn't just thumb the iPod. You went to the neighborhood school and you dealt with the teachers you were assigned. There were three channels of VHS and a handful of UHF channels that you could get most of the time. Shit, I didn't even live in a house with central air conditioning until I was in high school (in the DC area; in Boston and and Denver I do OK without it). And ethnic dining was Chinese or Italian. In other words, there was a lot more "suck it up" than "everything should be perfect." Not to sound like a geezer. iPods, central air, HBO, and Thai food make life better. But thinking of yourself as the little sun of a consumer solar system, as the sole source of heat and light: annoying. On the other hand, maybe there were always whiners, but they didn't have web.

Each week, in a sidebar to his main review, Tom Sietsema of the Washington post answers a question from a reader, that, one supposes, illuminates one of the many intricacies or mysteries of fine dining. This one caught my eye. "Halfway through the main course...another couple was seated directly next to us," even though there were "several empty tables"... his "intimate dinner was ruined." Ruined? Not "disturbed," "interrupted," "blemished," or "tarnished," but dashed beyond repair....the food apparently rendered inedible, his date unlovely and uncharming, and the glasses chipped and spotted? Now, we all want perfect evenings, and it's surely annoying to have another couple seated near you in fairly empty restaurant. But can't we all handle a little imperfection in an imperfect world, without our world and our big nights out collapsing? I seem to see this more and more in on-line discussions -- though not so much here -- people so incapable of dealing with life's realities that the merest slip results in outrage, regret, demands for comped desserts, gnashing of teethe and rending of garments. Now, dining out is surely fraught with peril and I don't want to excuse servers who forget your fork while the meat gets cold, combative maitre d's, and kitchens that just aren't as transcendent as they are reputed to be. And what passes for inexpensive dining these days can be ruinously expensive. And, in the handful of restaurants in the world which may indeed approach perfection, there is little margin for error. But, for the other million restaurants on earth, whatever happened to shaking it off, taking it all in stride, and seeing the glass as half full -- of that fizzy water they're charging eight bucks a bottle for, even though you asked for tap -- whenever possible? In the end, it's just dinner. [supplemental thought: it seems that the flip side of hypersensitivity in these fora is a tendency to wildly overpraise -- maybe not wildly, but utterly without critical faculty -- in cases where that overreaction is equally unwarranted. "If I like it, it must be perfect." Can we blame TV for this? Or is it the parents' fault? ]

I think of on-line menus as one of several resources while travelling, but generally don't read them too closely. It's more of a lit crit exercise, like something you'd learn at the Duke English department. I'm less worried in what the menu says than the way it's. What's the font, how wordy are the descriptions, how many chefs are listed. Is the web site helpful or annoying. Are the graphics cool, too cool by half, or not cool at all. What languages do the assume you know a least a little of. How many dishes have I heard of. That kind of thing. I never actually believe the actual wording of a menu until I'm holding it in my hand and sipping a martini, so I don't spend much time worrying about individual dishes or prices -- I'm just looking for personality clues and political/marketing agendas. And, in the end, I'd be far more likely to make a decision based on the recommendation of a person I trust, than a survey of a dozen menus.

I think comped drinks involve compromise. It doesn't do me any good to pay the full price for a comped drink, but the bartender does deserve a substantial prmium. I usually try to split the difference.

When they sell at the Dupont market I find that their crust can lack pizzazz. Pretty good stuff, though. I don't know if it had anything to do with this thread, but someone asked in Todd Kliman's on-line chat "Any truth to the spreading rumor that the quality of Bread Line's products has declined precipitously since it was purchased by a French company?" Todd was averred that he couldn't answer, but that he had had an unfortunate experience with an egg salad sandwich the other day.

I was full of trepidation before lunch with Doc, the kind of fear you get when someone who can speak well and at length about his experiences at el Bulli and the French Laundry says, "why don't you pick the restaurant?" But Vidalia caught my eye because it seemed a nice twist on the seasonal/international/farmers middle name identified on the menu cooking that you see so much these days. Something Southern fried for my yankee friends. Little to add to Dr. Sconzo's observations but, as long as I'm here: the reason no one got to taste the Vidalia Onion was because it was bland and I felt guilty trading it off for better food. Everything else was great. The country fried steak was alarmingly similar to the only other "gravy" that came with it. I think maybe I just like batter-fried anything, but you can't beat that combination of red meat and a good crispy crust. Not an elegant affair, but tasty and the greens cut the richness of the steak and gravy quite nicely. Spectacular mashed potatoes. I don't thing Doc mentioned the grits, which we got as a side dish and were unable to finish off, despite their addictive qualities -- qualities enhanced by some smokey bacon and a few slices of mushroom. Better than Grandma's. We finished dinner with my first slice of chess pie -- I'm not sure how it compares to others, but I was quite pleased with it. All in all, though the food wasn't as good as the company, I thought it was quite a tasty meal and I wonder why the place doesn't get more play in the on-line media hearabouts. It seemed for a while that Viadalia was on the verge of slipping into irrelevance -- I don't think there's any danger of that today.

I actually don't get out to bars that much any more. Kids, you know, and a mortgage and now I have a place to live that's big enough that I can read a book without having to hear the TV and the neighbor's toilet flushing or stare at the same low ceiling and rented furniture... But in the day, I both worked in bars and more or less lived in them, usually stuff on the dive-y end of the spectrum. And when I was travelling for politics, well, where the hell were you going to go after a 15-hour day? Not back to another grim, anonymous hotel room. Somehow I got myself so acclamated that almost any bar, almost anywhere, feels like home to me. There's an instant sense of well-being, that I'm with my people, even if I've never been there before and even if they're giving me the old hairy eyeball for dragging my yuppie ass into a blue collar spot. Sure, there have been a couple awkward moments. I once went into the bar around the corner from my house to get a pack of smokes, and found myself the only white guy in the room. Conversation more or less stopped for many a long minute. To make the situation more surreal, I had to ask the bartender for change. And when a bar goes quiet, those quarters can make a lot of noise clanking into the change box. In Fort Dodge, Iowa, the bartender ignored me and my buddies so completely and aggressively that we finally got the message and pushed on. And occasionally there's the "wait, there's only guys in this bar," moment, which actually doesn't bother me but seems to amuse the bartenders when that look of recognition crosses my face. But more often than not I have a chance to curl up next to a cold beer, I have a chat with a bartender and maybe meet a regular or two, and it's a lot like getting a postcard from home. Anyone else feel that way about random watering holes. Is this odd? And is it unhealthy?

[Hey, Phaelon: speaking of local bars, is Uncle Sam's still around?] I've found that overtipping in bars generally pays off pretty well over the long haul. I've gotten many a free drink and had numerous gtlasses of wine topped off thanks to my polite demeanor and readiness with a crisp fin.

My one complaint on my previous visit was that they hit a bit of a rut midway through -- a lot of variations on mango ravioli. Appears that they've cleared that up nicely and I am now plotting my return. Thanks, Doc.

Please explain. ← If I'm not mistaken, Breadline supplies the bread at Citronelle, among other places in town. Correct? ← I was at a cooking demonstration at Citronelle and at one point Michel went off on a mock rant (and I will not phoneticize his words, but mentally add a French accent to get the proper effect) that went some thing like this: "This stupid bread! People come up to me all the time and don't say anything about he meal, they say 'I love your bread.' IT IS THE ONLY THING WE DO NOT MAKE IN THE RESTAURANT!" I felt a little guilty at that point for thingking of the bread as one of the highlights of my meals there...and then I went out anb bought a couple of loaves. Oh, well. Next time there will be room for a cheese course.

Not only not off topic but a public service if you get an answer. I generally like Atwaters at the Dupont Market, but baguettes don't seem to be their strength, and Bonaparte kind of an in the mood thing.

Aside from the fresh greens and the chatter with the farmers, one of the best things about the opening of the Mt. Pleasant Farmers Market each spring was the return of the Breadline bread, fresh on Saturday mornings. Alas, since the acquisition of the Breadline by La Brioche Doree, apparently a French attempt to revenge themselves on globalizing Americans by foisting soulless pseudo-French baguettes on us, the bread seems not so much declining in quality, as plummeting. Anyone else noticed this? And, will it be worth eating at Michel Richard's Citronelle now that the Ciabbatta -- originally named Palladin, after Jean-Louis -- is no longer a delight?

Admittedly it has been a loooooong time since I staggered into the Double-T after a long night of underaged (and aged -- 18 for beee back then) drinking, but I'm betting that it is still not a gourmet destination. Best Double-T moment: the night after the last day of high school, 8 best buds singing "You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me Lucille" anthem-like along with the jukebox. Second Best: Being threatened by an alleged "Vietnam Vet" for getting sassy with him. (no, the two incidents were not related).

I was trying to figure out if my neighborhood's Korean-owned, Salvadoran-staffed grocery stores selling Latin, Asian and Ethiopian foods to yuppies, African-Americans, Vietnamese and, apparently (somebody's buying the injera), the occasional African, and which can be a bit funky at times were in fact "ethnic" or even "multi-ethnic," when it occurred to me that the kind of stores that launched this thread might be better identified as "low-income" or "downscale." I'm sure we've all been in the kind of stores that SuzySushi references. Anyone ever been in one where the clientel looked like they had the same average income as a typical suburban Safeway's customers? And, who's typically running these places? A family that borrowed heavily to get the doors open is likely supporting recently arrived relatives with few job skills, or maybe a couple of kids in Med School. There's no money for new lighting or new paint. The aisles are narrow. You can see a couple of layers of linoleum where where it's worn through. And the cash flow demands that that dented can has to sit on the shelf until it sells. The place just looks less appetizing (by upscale U.S. standards, many of us do love our holes in the wall). And the meat and fish setting out on ice or in the counter -- not shrink wrapped and vacuum packed -- so the natural decline of perfectly good stuff in a small, small place lends a certain smell to the air, one we don't associate with the sanitized supermarkets of our (U.S.) youth. Whether or not the differences are good or bad, or both, they clearly exist, and touch people at a visceral level, regardless of what they would like, or like to believe.

The name Languedoc allegedly derives from the way the word "yes" was pronounced -- "òc" in language of Southern France now known as Occitane, as opposed to the way the northerners pronounced it: oïl. That Medoc is relatively far from Languedoc makes me wonder if it has a different derivation. I have no experience with long-running cassoulets, but I worked for two months at an Italian restaurant which never during that time actually took its pot of tomato sauce off the stove. Every now and then someone would throw a some more tomatoes, some herbs, and a few meatballs and sausages in and that was it. It was quite good.

One of my favorite cooking memories is hitting a "lodge" in Grand Lake Colorado, with bunk beds and a communal kitchen, after a week living on diner food and the offerings of backwoods restaurants. We bought supplies at the local grocery store/tackle shop/package shop and made little filet mignons on emglish muffins, with Hollendaise, a suddenly-remembered combo from an old post-shift watering hole. The thing about Hollendaise is that it's easy as pie to make, once you get the hang of it. I tried it once with drawn butter, as some recipes suggest, but didn't like the result. I find it holds pretty well on a warm part of the stove, but usually try to pull it together relatively close to when we'll be spooning it over the asperagus or eggs.